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Girl Factories

February 27, 2009 — Suzan

Catkisser sez: “And it’s not just the TGs, it’s those who run the “girl factories” as well. The absolute best break I got when I transitioned was going to the “wrong” therapist and being shunned by those in the local gender program. I worked and socialized with other women instead, sometimes I think that makes the difference.”

Those of us who came out in the the days before they invented GID didn’t have therapists. At least those of us who came out young didn’t.

I wasn’t even examined by a psychiatrist when I asked for hormones. I talked to a psychiatric social worker at San Francisco’s public health clinic, The Center for Special Problems for less than an hour and much of that was regarding other agencies and places I could go to get various forms of help for things like employment.

It seems as though today’s Girl Factories serve to indoctrinate that one needs life long psychiatric support and that one has GID.

Arlene Lev seems to be among the worst of these.

The other product of these factories is the indoctrination in the transgender/gender mantra.

I went 24/7 right after the end of the People’s Park up-rising in Berkeley. I was in a collective at the time that and was affiliated with SDS. Just about the time I went 24/7 SDS split and Weaterman emerged. I was part of the Weatherman faction.

My biggest conflicts with the Transsexual Counseling Unit in SF was that they were so pre-feminist in their straight expectations and I was so militantly left.

I agree whole heartedly with Cat Kisser on the part of forming yourself among women and not among the transgenders.

Even when we had the peer to peer group in SF it was like the clothing line FUBU’s name For Us, By Us. Instead of becoming addicted to an ideology about 10 of us became friends. There are only two of us left but I still really value her friendship.

I read, oh do I read on a number of topics but for the purposes of this I’ve read large numbers of works either about transsexualism or biographies of those of us who have coped with having had and been treated for transsexualism. I just finished Aleshia Brevard’s book. Very interesting, the difference of ten years and the Sixties happening inbetween our dealing with our transsexualism.

Understanding our stories in the framework of something other than the psychiatric idieology or the transgender ideology is important.